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Mango Doughnuts

I made mango and vanilla doughnuts. If you read the title, that should have been plenty obvious. If you’re just skimming, I also provided a decently large photo of a mango doughnut, for convenience, under this paragraph. Okay, ready to move on from this awful introduction? I rolled warm, pillowy balls of fried dough in homemade vanilla sugar and stuffed them full of luscious mango curd. Yum.

To make these, I modified a doughnut recipe I used a while back for banana and caramel doughnuts. I merged that recipe with the recipe that I posted for buttermilk beignets. The combination was great since they turned out amazingly fluffy. I may have ate too many. Well, I did eat too many. I guess I used “may” there in hopes of consoling myself after eating half a dozen of these. Hmm… it didn’t work as well as I had hoped. I also took some coarse sugar crystals, which are usually used as sprinkles, and mixed them with some ground Tahitian vanilla beans (I had a lot left over after making vanilla tarts) and the caviar from a whole vanilla bean. After rubbing everything together with my fingers, the oils from the vanilla imparted a lovely, light flavour to the sugar. Magical, almost, but not really. Magic doesn’t exist.

After frying, I rolled the mango doughnuts in the delightful vanilla sugar. “Mmm…”, I said, as I ate a handful of the sugar. This isn’t one of my awful jokes, folks. I actually ate a handful of sugar. It was pretty good, I guess, for a handful of sugar.

To balance out all the sweetness, I knew that I needed a tart filling. That’s why the mango curd that I made to fill these doughnuts has quite a bit of lime juice in it.

When making the curd, I wasn’t really sure how much filling I needed. I didn’t end up with enough. Half of the “mango” doughnuts had no trace of mango in them. “No, it’s there. You probably just don’t have a very sensitive palate,” I said as my family bit into mango-less doughnuts. (I had already eaten most of the mango-filled ones by then.)

I later realized that the reason that I ran out of curd was that I was simply putting in way too much filling in each of the first half-dozen doughnuts. You see, I had recently bought a new piping tip made specifically for filling doughnuts, éclairs, and profiteroles (it’s called a Bismarck tip, Wilson and Ateco #230 and #231) and was quite trigger happy using it. So, each doughnut ended up with a lot of filling. Well, half of them did. The others got none. I couldn’t really suck the mango filling out of the over-filled doughnuts though. That would be stranger than usual behaviour for me. It would also be unhygienic to suck filling out of them. The good news is that if you’re not trigger happy with a piping bag, you can avoid this problem.

There is one drawback to these mango and vanilla doughnuts though, and it’s not that they’re way too tasty (that’s not really a problem). It’s the colour of the filling; it’s not terribly appealing. Next time, I think I will consider adding some orange food colouring to balance out the bright yellow colour the egg yolks imparted on the curd. But, other than the colour of the filling, these mango doughnuts are soft bundles of joy. Delicious joy. Which, frankly, is the best type of joy.

For the vanilla sugar (you can also substitute for store-bought vanilla sugar):

200g sugar, the coarser the better

1 vanilla bean

1 tablespoon ground vanilla beans (optional)

Method

Prepare the mango curd:

Blend together the mangoes, sugar, lime juice, salt, and nutmeg until smooth.

Add the egg yolks and blend until smooth.

Strain into a medium saucepan, and dispose of the pulp. Straining might take a while, but make sure you do it or the curd will end up pulpy.

Heat the curd over low heat, whisking frequently. When you see a few large bubbles form (around 170ºF or 75ºC), remove from the heat and whisk in the chunks of butter, one by one, until combined.

Let cool to room temperature, and then chill in the fridge for at least three hours before using. Overnight is better.

Prepare the doughnut dough:

Stir together the yeast and milk in a large bowl (if you're using a mixer, add to the mixer bowl). Let rest for a few minutes.

Add the flour, sugar, salt, and eggs. Mix until combined. If you're using a mixer, use the dough hook on the lowest speed for about 5 minutes. You will need to scrape down the sides of the bowl around once every minute.

Continue mixing and drop in the pieces of butter one at a time until combined.

Once combined, knead the dough; about 3 minutes with a mixer, or 6 by hand. The dough will still be a little bit sticky. Place in a clean bowl, cover, and let rise until doubled in volume--about 2 hours.

Once the dough has risen, deflate it using your fist. Place the dough onto a lightly floured work surface and roll until it is about ¼'' (0.7cm) thick.

Using a round cookie cutter or glass, cut out the doughnuts (depending on the size of the cutter, you'll get a different number of doughnuts--with a 3'' cutter I got about a dozen doughnuts). Transfer the doughnuts, as you cut them, to a parchment paper-lined baking sheet. Remember to take the extra dough and reroll it to form more doughnuts.

Let the doughnuts rise until puffy, about 1 hour.

Prepare the vanilla sugar:

Scrape the vanilla bean into the sugar in a small bowl, and mix in the ground vanilla beans if using.

Rub together with your fingers for two minutes, until well combined.

Fry, coat, and fill the doughnuts:

Heat about 4'' (10cm) of vegetable oil in a medium to large saucepan to 360ºF (180ºC). Meanwhile, place paper towel on a pan nearby to soak up the oil from the doughnuts as they finish frying. Make sure that the vanilla sugar is nearby.

Cut the parchment paper the doughnuts are on into rectangles such that each doughnut is on one rectangle.

Drop a couple of doughnuts in at a time (the number will depend on the size of your pot). Immediately remove the parchment paper and let fry for 1 minute (the parchment paper is helpful for transferring the doughnuts into the oil without deflating them). Flip over, and fry for 1 more minute. The doughnuts should be golden brown.

Once golden brown, remove them from the oil and pat with the paper towel. Quickly drop and roll the mango doughnuts in the vanilla sugar while they are still hot and a little bit damp.

Once you're done frying, fill a piping bag with the mango curd. It's easiest to fill the doughnuts with a doughnut filling Bismarck tip (like Wilson or Ateco #230 or #231), but you can also use a round tip. Puncture the doughnut and fill with the curd. If you're not using a doughnut filling tip, you may need to make a hole in the doughnut with the handle of a small spoon before filling.

I have never had a mango doughnut before but I love the idea so much. They look amazing.

What spectacular donuts! The mango curd sounds incredible!!!

Mango doughnut! Great idea! I can’t wait to try it when summer has come… in 6 months (?). Well, it’s gloomy in Australia now. Don’t worry, I also do the same thing. I like to lick my fingers coated with sugars or even raw batters left in the mixing bowl as well as sucking out the leftover filling from pipping tip/bag after finishing pipping (oh cream patissiere! such a joy!) . Well, now you know my dirty little secret! As I always believe, there is no waste for delicious stuff! :P

Must have these doughnuts! OMG! Do they look beyond fantastic! I keep wanting to make doughnuts, but never get around to it. I seriously need to change that.

Really gorgeous, Ilan! The doughnuts look like they have the perfect texture, and I would have totally eaten a handful of vanilla sugar too! I laughed out loud when you said “You probably just don’t have a very sensitive palate!” Ha!

It sure is a beautiful doughnut. My mom used to make doughnuts but I wasn’t really very fond of them, not because her doughnuts weren’t good but because I just don’t care for fried food.

Mango! I love mango so much (even though I developed allergy last year all the sudden – I still eat small portion sometimes). These doughnuts look sooo good! I can’t resist those sugary doughnut photo (3rd one). I should make this one day!